#poetry-slam

#poetry-slam

To fully grasp the band Soul Coughing and their debut album, Ruby Vroom, whose mix of hip-hop beats, samples, jazz, and rock sounded wildly fresh in the early days of "alternative music," it helps to understand how poetry and spoken-word performance fit in. You also need to get a handle on just how much newly unearthed sound from the past was back in circulation, now that the compact disc had exploded and the record industry was printing money.